Whether you’re looking to do some late spring cleaning, or you just want to liberate some of your guilty pleasure movies from their DVD prisons, it is time we revisit the process of ripping your DVD collection into iTunes. Ripping DVDs is not only easy, it can save a lot of money as you begin (or continue) to build your digital video library.

As the self-proclaimed digital projectionist for the casa de la Stark, let me walk you through the basic steps and available software applications to get those movies off the plastic and into your Mac.

These days there are numerous ways that an aspiring webmaster can build a website, from the super complex down to the really easy. RapidWeaver from Realmac Software fits nicely in between, offering simple and easy to use ways of creating a website yet allowing enough flexibility for more advanced users to be able to spread their wings a little.

With Apple’s abandonment of iWeb, many home brew would-be website owners have been left without a way to easily build a site in a friendly WYSIWYG environment and RapidWeaver more than fills that void. Today we’ll be taking a look at how to make a simple website with RapidWeaver.

If you travel a lot or have a job that keeps you working in different places throughout the day, a decisive factor when you purchased your computer might have been the battery life. MacBooks generally have pretty good battery run time, but in order to keep it functional for as long as you can, you might have to give your battery a little maintenance over time.

Today we’re going to present to you a free app called Battery Health that can give you tips and information regarding the battery of your MacBook. Want to check it out?

In this day and age, everyone wants high-definiton content, and that means they either have to download the new 1080p video from iTunes or watch some Blu-Rays on their HDTV. Sadly, Macs still don’t sport Blu-Ray drives and probably never will, so why bother? Well, if you’ve already invested in lots of Blu-Ray films and TV shows, then it’s really not worth re-purchasing all your content on iTunes just to have it on your computer at the same resolution. I mean, there really should be a solution for this sort of thing.

And there is — sort of. You see, film producers decided that they would offer digital copies of their films with the physical copies. The only problem with this great idea is that many films do not include it and almost every TV show I know doesn’t, leaving the majority of what you own tied to your television and not playable on your Mac or Apple TV. Instead of fretting about this and going off to re-purcahse all your content on iTunes so that you can watch it on your iOS devices, Mac computers, and Apple TV, maybe you should consider ripping your Blu-Ray content. It’s not that hard to do actually, and I’m going to give you a full walkthrough, so join me after the break for some insight on getting all your high-definition content on your Mac.

Glowing monitors filled with lines of scrolling green text aren’t limited to The Matrix; most IT gurus and power users prefer working with the command line over clunky graphical user interfaces because the CLI allows the user to operate directly with the system.

While the command line can seem terrifying at first, starting at the basics will allow you to see that it’s not much different from the graphical world you are used to. Learning how to use Terminal will give you a better understanding of how your Mac works under the hood, and give you the skills needed to troubleshoot any issue.

For many of us, our computer’s hard drive has become a vast repository of digital images. Everyday, we snap photos with our smartphones and digital cameras which are then deposited into countless folders. But let’s face it, when our hard drives start to get full, who enjoys the tedious process of navigating these folders searching for duplicates files and miscued shots? How often do we pause and ask ourselves, “Do I really need all 12 shots of that coffee table?”

Organizing and tidying up our photo libraries can be a time consuming project, one that some of us may never embark upon. Fortunately, getting a handle on this task has been made significantly easier. Enter Photosweeper, a robust photo organizing application that will assist in cleaning up and putting in order any photo collection. Whether it’s a hundred megabytes or dozens of gigabytes, Photosweeper will quickly and effectively sort images and help reduce the size of your collection, resulting in more usable disk space.

When you take the plunge and purchase a brand new Mac, you’re receiving far more than simply a beautiful computer wrapped in svelte packaging. The modern Apple computing experience is complemented by various online services, features and products which Apple offer exclusively to their customers, in the hope of compelling Mac users to stay within the cozy confines the Cupertino company’s ecosystem.

All that’s needed to delve right into this ecosystem is an Apple ID, so let’s get started on this third part of Mac 101, which will take a look at creating an Apple ID and using it to maximum effect.

Having discussed the very basics and some of the apps which come bundled with OS X Lion in part one of Mac 101, let’s now delve in a little deeper with the aim of getting a better idea of how to properly tweak and organise the latest and arguably greatest of Apple’s OS X. We’re going to get to grips with how one navigates the OS X file system using Finder, in addition to minor tweaks like setting up a custom background, or wallpaper.

Relatively speaking, this early part of Mac 101 will still cater toward the inexperienced Mac user but, with luck, even experienced users of Apple computers will learn something new!

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on April 19th, 2010.

GeekTool is a really neat preference panel that allows widget-like functionality on a highly customizable level.

Unfortunately, if you aren’t particularly geeky, this app can be a bit confusing to get up and running. Luckily enough, here at AppStorm there’s definitely no shortage of geeks such as myself to help you out! I’ll take you step by step through finding and installing scripts to make your desktop the envy of the office.

Welcome to part one of Mac 101, a series of articles helping you get to grips with everything you need to know about using a Mac. In due time we’re going to cover pretty much everything you need to know, but naturally this opening piece will focus on the very basics and introduce new users to some of the great applications and features that come pre-installed with a new Mac and OS X Lion.

So without further ado, let’s take a closer look at some of the fundamentals of Mac OS X Lion and become more acquainted with Apple’s unique method of making computing easy for all.